Sectional Tension: Federalism, Family & what is going on with the states? | BRIght & Early

0:04 hello young people of the internet welcome to another episode of bright and early a webseries from the Bill of Rights Institute my name is Rachel tapes and humphreys I’m the director of outreach for the Institute and I’m joined by my colleagues Kirk and Gary hello hello so today’s theme is all about federalism and the family so one

0:26 of the things we’ve been noticing is a lot of discussion of different states and their responses to different things right now and the role of the federal government and what it should be and then also noticing a lot about our families and how we’re doing so I want to just open up with how are you guys doing how’s it has it been the past couple of days doing better in a lot of

0:47 ways actually starting to kind of figure out the day a little bit more sort of like putting a structure sort of making decisions throughout the day that are they’re giving me something to hold on to yeah yeah likewise I feel like things are I’m getting more into a routine and and things seem more stable for some

1:08 reason now things it seems like the world is kind of settled into this new reality for a while here and we’re all just kind of kind of dealing with it yeah they say that a good like time period to start a new habit is like three weeks right so we’re now entering week four so maybe we’re all establishing new habits that help us for

1:31 the next couple of months yeah I’ve noticed I mean speaking of habits if I go out and walk my dog or anything I’ll throw the neighborhood how other people are responding as you’re walking down the sidewalk and things is is now different than it was or if you go to the grocery store to pick up food people are being at least in my neighborhood very conscious of of spacing and

1:54 everything else which has been an interesting change in development yeah and so as part of that like I think we’re also not only noticing our own habits but we’re starting to notice a lot of things about our families and how our families are structured as we think about who’s the one who initiates the the Xoom calls or the FaceTime calls or

2:14 the whatsapp calls or who gets to decide on on meal times and meal prep and that good a bunch of us at the office or not at the office from the office thinking about how families are structured and how families are similar to how governments are structured and how families are dissimilar are not like families are not

2:36 like government structures some of the things that that I was thinking about is that okay so family is similar to government in that it’s composed of individuals just like government’s are competitive individuals it is composed of individuals who make choices based on their own knowledge and their own interests it’s composed of a generally has rulesets

2:57 and if it has good rule sets which some not all families do and not all governments do if it has good rule sets then those rule sets will benefit and protect the family from harm and then if it’s a if it’s well ordered and has good rule sets then the people are generally

3:17 happy to be a part of it they there they they consent to the what’s happening within the family and that everybody’s born into one right so not everyone every often we have options for exit when it comes to our government and our family we can move or we can distance ourselves but we’re always born into

3:38 some some organization with rules whether we like it or not so there’s always that they’re similar and then I was trying to think of the ways that they’re dissimilar how is it that a government is not at all like a family and I think the biggest one is the a is the complexity right it’s a very different even really big families like

3:58 I sometimes see big family reunions where it’s hundreds of people even big families still have the ability to get the temperature and have us have a set of needs that can be aligned when you get to the order of magnitude of a government I think that that that’s where the sakes this idea of an extended order comes in that but there’s no one

4:20 governing body that can cover all the different needs and interests and wants of all those different people and so as we’re thinking about families and federalism and all the different ways that were interacting something that I was wondering if you noticed out there on the Internet is how many governor names do you know this week how about you guys Kirk and Gary

4:42 how many governor names have you heard this week as opposed to like three weeks ago yeah I mean I’m not gonna name them now that’s a good discussion to have with the audience but I think you definitely are seeing a focus change on the concept of authority you’re right a lot more governors I’m hearing a lot I’m hearing more mayor’s talk where I am I’m

5:03 just I’m learning the names at least for my own and and even for friends I have in other states you know those names that pop up as as expressing what’s going on or reassuring people really are different names and I just had been hearing for whatever reason prior to that yeah yeah definitely especially you know here in you know

5:23 we’re in the Washington DC region where there’s well the federal district and two states that are all in close approximation to each other and so there’s a lot of dialogue amongst those in hearing those different names and seeing the different responses and you know it’s been it’s been I guess different than where we were even four

5:44 or five weeks ago where a lot of the country’s attention was only on the Democratic primaries and on the upcoming presidential race which is a very national focus now things are very much at a local local focus now that accordion has been really interesting to watch because like I said two months ago it was everybody talking about how all politics are national all politics are

6:05 national and now it’s constricted in this I mean politics are neighborhood by neighborhood in some places right so I have a friend my best friend lives in Conway Arkansas and she was telling me that her mayor gave a set of suggestions but Arkansas is one of the eight states that don’t have a stay at home owner but

6:26 the city of Little Rock which is the next biggest major town has a different does have a stay at home order and so she has employees that aren’t able to come up to work because of the stay at home order in the city which is the major city near her city which has a very different set of rules and so I think that when we think about when we’re thinking about all these things the idea of the intimate order

6:47 routes is the extended order and what the limits of both of those are is is a nice framing device or thought experiment is this something that is controllable by a centralizing group or is it something that is so complex like making a pencil ER or getting bread to the table or milk that that it requires

7:10 a kind of freedom of individuals to make choices in their own best interest that isn’t necessarily required in the kind of intimate order on that note Gary’s been thinking a lot about this Gary taught psychology for a long time in addition to history and if you watch one of our previous episodes you saw him bring up some of these theories of

7:31 proximity but we’re now gonna explore that a little deeper right Gary absolutely yeah I mean just the thing you just said you know is what strikes in terms of just conceiving of who are we talking about when we talk about us right us can be the couple of people maybe that’s in your home us was a

7:52 couple of weeks ago maybe the students in class right maybe 30 40 people the depending on how and size your class then us becomes your town versus us of the metro area we’re in just like you’re saying so the concept of us the kinds of individuals and the group did get me thinking about psychology so I’m gonna share this the psychology got me

8:14 thinking about is gestalt psychology for all the psychology students out there you might have had this already and the idea of the theories in gestalt psychology is contemplating what individuals and the whole are and so there’s a lot of different laws in it and bylaws this is something that is

8:34 trustworthy I don’t know what I would say it’s a full scientific laws on gravity but I think it’s something that reliably is a way that we think of things you’ll notice dots on here they represent individuals the way we’re talking about right but in this case it’s literally just individual dots and you get the idea that all the dots are equal that’s something huge we talk

8:55 about it here pri right equality that that each individual has a fundamental equality to each other and yet still our brains conceive of us in certain ways so the first one on the top left there is the line pointing at it on my screen the top left there is the law of similarity right so so the us is something you may

9:17 have in common with each other and we had talked about this sort of earlier in terms of you know maybe it’s maybe it’s the people who seem frequently maybe it’s the I see I’m starting to see similarity between myself and the fellow who walks with a red dog every day you know there’s just something there that I can identify with and and I bring that up now because I think with what’s going

9:38 on it was very theoretical when there was a big world of math with dots on it numbers but now that there’s stories of people you might be identifying with that similarity really really registers another one is the law of proximity we had talked about this in an earlier episode hopefully people caught that if not is the basic idea is that just your

9:59 proximity increases your feeling about another individual you look at the box the second box here and again remember dots are equal and yet what do you see in that box you see groupings or you probably see two groups purely because of proximity there seems to be the image of difference that’s happening or at

10:21 least the image that one side has something going on but ultimately they’re all they’re all equal and then there’s the law of the common region right just geography is one of the biggest most powerful things that you see here again the dots that are enclosed within certain areas seem to be part of different things it’s like a lot of proximity but but region geography

10:44 who you are around is it really yes you’re gonna say I wonder I wonder if that’s something you all have experienced out there in the internet land which is the idea that that that because you’re more aware of those closer to you right now you’re like more aware of the needs of your communities all right feeling closer to your town to

11:06 your neighborhood to your city to your state right if you look very close to a state border right exactly so I’m wondering if that’s the case for you you can let us know in the comments yeah no absolutely and that’s great yeah and that’s that’s something exactly like I wanted to talk about the this idea of what the home base is and who you’re

11:26 identifying with I like to think of when we talk about federalism sort of like it looks like the bull’s-eye again your make your brain is making an association there because of proximity of circles but but ultimately it’s just geography right so so there’s where you are in your home the people in your immediate vicinity right we’re calling that home and that has its own as you were saying

11:48 earlier Rachel it’s its own way of functioning to get through different things decisions that are made and then there’s the local and again geography and go maybe three four blocks away from where you are you know that’s your local your village your town they have decision makers maybe for your town your neighbors I’m getting letters about you know meeting neighbors and we’re talking

12:08 about ways of working out things and the mail and all these things I hadn’t been thinking about and then you may be in a city or near a city or a metro area and that can have an effect whether or not you’re in it or near it that that bigger geography of a city has a huge effect as as you said earlier decisions may be made for a city that’s different than

12:30 just outside the city limits for something then there’s the states we mentioned the governors we had mentioned legislators those that are thinking about everyone in a state the geography of that one that circles a huge one and then there’s United States itself we have something in common with every other citizen because of that geography

12:50 of where we are and that Association we have so when we think about federalism it’s really interesting it really is this one completeness all happening at once rather than a separation I think I don’t know what do you think er yeah I think that’s exactly right and I think it’s exactly this sort of a part of

13:13 human nature and how it is that we associate with one another’s that the founders had in mind when they were designing this federal system and so when we’re talking about federalism what we’re actually talking about um in that reference is the structure of government right so what what is the United States government what are our state governments our town governments local township or county governments in

13:35 some states depending and so the the framers were thinking a lot about this when they were crafting the constitution because they they realized that there are challenges both in the way that those local interests express themselves but also in in ensuring commonality

13:55 across a wide geographic area so of course you know in 1787 when the Constitution was being drafted it was a much smaller geographic area with with many fewer people but it was still a really large area it was the entire East Coast which would take days weeks to traverse at the time and and so this was a balance and so during the

14:17 Revolutionary War in 1776 the the the revolutionaries had crafted was called the Articles of Confederation which you may remember from your history classes and there was a very loose confederation of states that that functioned throughout the war to get them to get the the 13 colonies that were becoming United States through the war and

14:38 through that conflict but at the end of the conflict there was a lot of tensions erupting because those different interests as Gary was talking about we’re expressing themselves right so you know I might and if we use Gary’s mail example I may need to go down to the mail every day because I have you know part of my business is getting packages right so I need to be there at 10

14:58 o’clock every day well that might conflict with another resident in my building or in my neighborhood who shares the same mailbox areas mean but might get medication every day right so how do you how do you work those things out you need something that isn’t just my own interest but it’s a broader governing structure that’s allowing you to do that and so the framers put that together in there in

15:18 the constitution plan through this system called federalism and one of the best expressions of the sort of political science behind it is in the 39th Federalist paper so in 1788 during in 1787 to seventeen eighty eighty-eight there was a ratifying conventions held the country often at each of these

15:39 conventions the different states voted on whether or not to adopt the new constitution New York was one of the really most hotly contested battlegrounds for this and so three of the leading national politicians who are trying to get this together James Madison John J and Alexander Hamilton wrote 85 papers discussing this constitutional plan that’s a lot of argumentation it is yeah if there’s a

16:00 great reference in the musical Hamilton on how many Hamilton wrote versus the other two authors poor John James not write very many Madison was second but I think Hamilton wrote fifty-one papers which is pretty impressive that’s amazing how are they shared if I may ask so they were shared by both so they were originally published in the newspaper

16:20 but then they were actually sent out through the mail and throughout all thirteen colonies so for example Hamilton knew that there was going to be a struggle in Virginia where James Madison and I was actually from and started mailing these in packets to George Washington trying to get him to share him with his other contemporaries in the state to say look this is the plan you guys should get on board

16:42 because this is really great because people were concerned with the national government getting too much power because you in thinking back to our mail example you don’t want the overall government dictating everything you do because they might not have the local knowledge that they need in order to respond in certain situations so Madison and I won’t go through this whole paper but I really encourage you to check it out on the Bill of Rights Institute has these great annotated versions which can

17:03 help make sense of of the language and it boil down some of the arguments but I think it’s really interesting just a couple things to highlight Madison here starts out by talking about the Republican nature of the government and here he’s not talking about the Republican Party as we talked about today but republicanism meaning government by consent through representatives so he spends the first

17:24 half of this paper talking about how this is you know the the system of government that’s been established and by the way that’s what the American Revolution was fought for so if you put on your historian hat for a second it’s interesting to look at how he’s trying to claim the Revolution for himself in in this paper right but now putting our political science hat back on he goes

17:46 through and he’s trying to talk about why that consent is important for what we’re talking about right we’re going outside of ourselves whatever authority we’re now giving power we ought to be consenting to otherwise it’s oppressive to us because we have no saying we can’t voice that so we voiced that through voting but also through participation in you know petitions in just making sure that our

18:07 concerns are voiced in that it’s being received by the government so once he establishes that he goes through and talks about how the Constitution itself is both federal and national right so there are responsibilities that the national government has but there’s still responsibilities than the individual state governments and here is referring to that as federal governments have so that’s where the idea of

18:28 federalism comes from meeting federal is just another word for Confederacy or when multiple states come together to share sort of authority he talked about that in our system and I won’t go through all these examples but it gives many of them but one of the most clear is in our national system as it was originally constructed the House of

18:49 Representatives was a met in was a national body because it received votes directly from the people who elected national representatives to go directly serve their interests in the national government but it was also federal because before the 17th amendment was passed state governments would elect a representative meaning that the state legislators would get together choose a

19:10 representative to represent them in the Senate so in our bicameral legislature you have both the National the people being directly represented and the States being during the state interest being directly represented so it’s both a federal and a national body in yeah for those of you interested in arguments around the Electoral College looking at

19:30 the arguments around the 17th amendment is a really nice kind of like proxy argument for direct election because they did shift from the sate the state legislatures having the power and therefore the state being powerful within the federal government to to a direct election of senators of the

19:52 people of the constituents of the state and so there’s there’s an interesting dialogue about the nature of who should rightly have that kind of and similar arguments come about all the time in the electoral college discussions yeah it’s really interesting it’s all driven by trying to find a balance between these things I mean you’re just saying how do you do two things at once very amazing yeah yeah

20:14 and kind of wraps it up with a statement that’s exactly about that messiness right he says the proposed Constitution therefore in strictness is neither national nor federal but a composition of both in its foundation need is federal not national in the sources which the ordinary orders powers come from you know it is federal and not

20:35 national but what he’s saying there is look it’s not either one of those things it’s both and it’s in that messiness that they’re really trying to tap into fostering these local interests to be able to act in the capacities that they need to be able to and independently but also when there’s a collective problem to be able to respond so this pandemic is in unfortunate but an unfortunate

20:57 example of this but the national government had to respond at a very national level and so you see Congress debating major stimulus packages and you see Congress up in the president’s stepping up in the CDC making guidelines all of those are because this is something that’s affecting the entire country at the same time we’re hearing a lot of governor’s because those governors are responding to the problems that are happening in their state so if

21:18 you’re in a a more rural state you know that that looks a lot different a lot of times than it does in more populous areas or more populous states and the dynamism between those things can be challenging to balance and I think over the next years and months will be talking about whether or not we got it right in this instance but you can see the way that the system is set up to

21:39 allow both of those things to operate without stepping on one another but but jointly together and I think we are seeing that that kind of and again if you noticed knowing more governor or mayoral names right that we’re seeing the the kind of that that accordion of

22:00 responsibilities who is responsible taking the S the CDC recommendations and applying them to their states becomes the role of the state Surgeon General’s right they they’re they are the ones that take those recommendations apply them to the needs of their state and so there are a lot of ways for you to kind of catalog your experience and and for you to think about how all of

22:22 this is interacting and relating to you in your community gary has some ideas for us for how we can do that yes absolutely we had again if you’ve seen earlier episodes we’re big fans of observation and of journaling so if that’s something you’re doing here’s here’s maybe a little prompts

22:42 yeah those questions are really interesting in terms of just what do you see as you said you know really is interesting hearing from state Surgeon General’s or mayor’s or governor’s or legislatures as well as the the large hands of governor and and the you know who’s around us in our communities so just as maybe a simple thing if you’re

23:04 already observing if you’re already journaling think about these questions and you can share them with us if you want to talk about it of course but think about these questions and this is based on everything we’ve talked about so the simplest one is what decisions have impacted you the most there’s been a lot of decisions going around a lot of people making choices could be big could

23:26 be small but what decisions have impacted you the most which one can I use Kurt a clarification are you asking about decisions other people’s have made that I have to obey or decisions I’ve made for myself or books could be both they could be that’s good I should have clarified yeah no it can’t really be both right so in this new world of

23:47 things happening decisions are being made so I’m gonna have are the agency of an individual and some are the groups the small groups that are part of some are bigger groups where are the decisions that are being made you’re right and the answer could be my personal decision to structure my day a little Ben Franklin wink there the

24:07 structure my day could have been what impacted me the most here it could have been schools closing it could have been having to do things online what decisions they are going to be different for different people but they’re all really interesting and of course those decisions are not only you as an individual but back to our other talks the idea of which ones have impacted the state the most or the country the most an important decision you

24:28 governance both everybody did earlier is how do these decisions get made I mean it really strikes me that we really want to make decisions that balance a couple of different interests all at the same time and they may seem on the surface really in conflict and yet things have to happen the days are going to pass so that leads us to you mentioned

24:48 republicanism and things like this who’s in the conversation is it everybody is it a couple of people I don’t think it’s one person I also don’t think it’s 500 million people or maybe it is 500 million people who’s in the conversation let’s pay attention to that and jot that down and then not only who are in the conversations about decisions but who do

25:09 you see or hear expressing these decisions is it a governor maybe that’s why we’re seeing their names a lot they’re directly telling us some things maybe it’s your mayor telling you things and a lot of cases it could be someone reporting on someone else a reporter or a friend or someone who is just hearing about these things and so these are really interesting see what are the important decisions how are

25:31 they being made and who’s involved in it I just think that’s something to consider and if you’d like let us know about it absolutely and that’s part of why we have this this this web series is to hear your voice and to give you the opportunity to reflect on the the goings on right now with us being welcomed into your home and you and welcoming us into

25:53 your life we would love to hear from you so please comment repost speak reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram and we would love to hear more from you and see you next time on bright and early gentlemen do you have any any final thoughts for our friends out there on the internet no just I I’m eager to see

26:13 if if we hear from people but I’m also interested to see how things are developing and just how much how much we’re noticing and what the world’s gonna be like later on yeah and if there’s anything that you observe that you want us to explore talk about let us know we’re happy to take on topics that you’re curious about or or try to you know look at it at least from our

26:33 perspective and Bri has a lot of opportunities for you right now if you’re interested in winning some money for an essay contest we have an on essay contest called we the students where you can win $7,500 for an eight hundred word essay we also have unlocked all of our resources and have our YouTube channel and a new microsite called teach that might be our i.org if

26:55 you’re looking for some resources to supplement some of your classes or things to talk about with friends about all these things you can go to that website and really we’re here for you so we will see you next time on bright and early thank you and take care

27:19 you